Pain, pain, pain

In case you're wondering, and I believe you are, my fine friends, I do still have fibromyalgia and I do still get pain here.  Whenever the weather changes dramatically, and it does tend to do that a lot during the monsoon season here, and whenever it gets over 100 degrees.  Odd, but true. I have no idea why, but my dear Hispanic acupuncturist (not an oxymoron, although I would have thought so at one time) Angelica first noticed the pattern: that I get my "neuropathic pain" when it's especially hot here.  That's the kind that stings like the skin has been flayed on my back.  My least favorite pain.  That's the one that will stop me in my tracks whereas with the other types I get (aching, spasming, cramping, tightness) I can usually motor on through.  Not with the neuropathic pain.

I don't have as many flares and I don't usually have them as bad as I did in Ohio.  I've only missed about 3 days this year for illness and, as I've said, that's a huge difference!  I can never get over it, so I keep saying it.  I usually "man up" all week long, though, and collapse on the weekends.

Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday were especially bad, and after running errands with Benji on Saturday, my arms were killing me!  They've been getting progressively worse with the dog walking/toting I've been doing, and I've had to ask Rod to take more than his share of turns several times lately.

But Sunday was in a whole different class of pain.  My upper arms had knots in the muscles I could feel under the skin - big ones, like 1-2 inches, and the back of my neck and shoulders had the same.  And adhesions, where the fascia stuck together instead of letting the muscles slide and move like they should.

Fascia is the thin white sheath that holds the muscles fibers together.  There's fascia around every strand of muscle tissue, around every bundle of muscles and a sub-dermal fascia that goes under the skin around your entire body, like plastic wrap.  Mine often adheres to itself.  I used to tell Chris Hannan, when my sub-dermal fascia was twisted in my trunk area that I felt like I was walking with my slip twisted.  Women will understand that analogy.  Sometimes the underslip, or lining rotates one way when you walk, and the skirt goes the other way, something to do with the length of stride in each leg, I suppose.  And my femur was broken, so I have different lengths of legs.

Luckily, I was able to see Page, our awesome massage therapist, for an hour and a half at 10 AM, and she worked on just my arms, shoulders and neck.  I felt a lot better afterwards, but still drained, so had a little breakfast with Rod and went to bed.  Had already taken Percodan.  I didn't get up until 5 PM!  Then just rested quietly the rest of the day.

Was better Monday morning, so off I went.  And have continued to feel pretty good.  But damn, I hate missing my weekends like that.  There's so little spare time when I already have 2 nights a week booked for therapies.  When you don't hear from me, that's what's going on.  I work, recover from work, go to therapy and work around the house.  That's pretty much it, no social life to speak of, although I am trying to get to some Meetups (see www.meetup.com) for poetry, knitting, jewelry and craft groups.  That's harder now with Benji, because I feel bad to leave him behind when he's already in his crate while I'm at work.  The women I know from work are in much the same boat, only substitute a LOT of overtime for the chronic illness.

Most days the pain is at a dull roar - a 2 or 3 on the 1-10 scale.  Sunday was a 6-7 day, almost as bad as they get.  It wasn't quite bad enough to cause nausea and panic though.  Those are my worst days.

I've been lucky to find excellent therapists here and I've been able to afford them.  Or shall I say, I prioritize them and clean my own house so I can keep affording them.  But that exacerbates the pain, which causes a need for more therapy.  You see where that goes.  Hopefully the condo will sell and I won't have to make a choice between my therapies and paying that mortgage.

Oh, and guess what.  I noticed that the Health Reform Act will eventually lower - lower - the amount one can put into a health spending account on a pretax basis.  Right now it's limited to $4,000 per year.  I exceeded that in August this year and the last several years, with my massage therapy and acupuncture and drug expenses.  Now, I'll have even less on a pretax basis to work with.  Nice show, Washington.  Why would they do that??  I see no way that the HRA is going to help me, the regular joe with employer insurance and a chronic illness.  Once again, those with chronic illness slip through the cracks.  I tried to tell Obama, but I guess he didn't get the message.

Thanks for listening, friends.  I've needed to whine a little.